Brazil of financialization: from family consumption to the cooption of social assistance

Abstract

As a more recent face of the capitalist accumulation mode, financialization results, among other consequences, in the need for access to bank loans and consumption goods by low-income families. This occurs, primarily, so that they can ensure rights emptied by the State, generating explosions of consumption and indebtedness, which feed the neoliberal circuit, as in Brazil, especially since the 1990s. On the other hand, the growth of social assistance mechanisms, whose background they are the promotion of well-being and citizenship, they cease to serve only their original claims and also sustain, across the board, financialized capital. In such a scenario, this work aims to verify the dynamics of family spending and consumption in force in a Brazil marked by inequalities and by socio-assistance public policies in the financialized era. It is included in the banking-financial circle of impoverished populations and the use of public funds for the remuneration of banks. Methodologically, it starts with bibliographic research of classic and contemporary theorists critical of financialization and, together with secondary consumption and spending data from Brazilian families, notably those tracked and attended by assistance policies, as well as national budget execution, concludes by the co-option of the State by financialization and the breaking of the objectives originating from assistance actions.

Keywords
financialization; low-income families; public expending; consumption; assistance policies